Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Spanish word as English domain name
-
hi
anyine any issues with using Spanish, and other non English words, as domain names when trying to rank in Google uk. We launched a number of websites a while back but finding it hard to get much traction in Google uk. We are getting a reasonable number of impressions but cannot seem to get very high in the rankings. All the names are foreign words for their service. Our homeware website, for example, uses the basque word for furniture as its name.
other than potential branding issues of having domains people might struggle to spell, is there any serp issues we would face with these names.
thanks
-
I understand that. Sometimes it's a little frustrating to rank but I encourage you to ask yourself this questions:
- I'm trying to run a marathon rather than 100 metres?: try to rank first for less competitive keywords like "dinning tables" or "dining chairs in london" rather than "furniture"
- Do people know me?: maybe you need a little boost to people know you so you can get some SEO signals (links, social shares, branding). Try to run an AdWords Campaign, get active in your social media niche, make partnerships with niche sites (not just for get links, get visibility to other audiences).
- I'm measuring the right KPI's?: sometimes ranking for highly competitive keywords is not the best option if you have a brand new domain. Are you receiving organic traffic? Are you getting long tail rankings? How's the conversion rate of organic search compared to other sources? Are you receiving non-brand traffic rather than your brand (in Google Search Console).
Hope this can help you. Good luck!
-
Many thanks for the quick reply.
the domain extension is co.uk, hosted in uk and the site content all in English. Hopefully that's enough signals for Google. wmt has the uk as the default address for the domain. Due to the extension I'm unable to change it to another location even if I wanted to.
The domain pretty new with very little authority so that's probably more the cause with rankings than anything, I guess. Thought best double check before we invest a lot of time and effort in seo that we wouldn't be making life harder for us than needs to be.
regards
carl
-
I don't think if you are using a word in another language you will have a worst ranking rather than using english words. In Spanish speaking countries it's very often to see domains with english words.
If you are having impressions and not clicks, might be a branding issue and the domain name discourages the people to click. Its title and description are in English, Spanish or Basque? If you are not ranking my questions would be:
- The keywords you are trying to rank are too competitive?
- Are you using the keyword in your page?
- Do you have any link from sites in the UK?
- Do you target your domains to UK in Google Search Console if this domains are gTLD, if not, those domains are co.uk?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Using a top level domain name and directing it to a subfolder
Hi, we have a large international network. Our main website sits on .com domain and is used by the UK market. We have an international site in a subdirectory .com/dk/ for Denmark for example. We have also purchased the domain name www.ourcompany.dk/. Should we be forwarding the domain name (www.ourcompany.dk/) to point to the subdirectory www.ourcomany.com.dk/ so in the browser it shows up as www.ourcompany.dk or should we be displaying it as www.ourcompany.com/dk/? Are there any pros and cons to this method? Which one is best and are there any benefits in SEO. Ideally we want the .com domain name to have the best domain authority so would this impact it in any way? Any tips would be great.
International SEO | | Easigrass0 -
Where is it appropriate to use a .eu domain?
My client, a UK company, has a .eu domain and want to rank primarily in the UK but also worldwide, is a .eu domain appropriate?
International SEO | | peeveezee0 -
Best practice for Spanish version of English website?
I'm doing an audit for a site that has all of its English pages under the same roof with Spanish pages in Wordpress. It is intended for Chicago, not Mexico. I suspect this is not a good thing, but I only have instinct to rely on here. What is the best practice for having the same website in two languages? http://www.enhancedform.com/ and http://www.enhancedform.com/spanish/
International SEO | | realpatients0 -
E-Commerce - Country Domains versus 1 Domain?
Hi, Just wanted to get some feedback and opinions re the idea of segmenting our ecommerce site languages under various domains, like .jp for japanese, .it for italian etc... I do understand the geolocation benefits that this could bring us, but on the flipside, it would mean that we would need to grow our domain authority, link buiding per country domain, which is quite a bit of work. Has anyone ever considered or implemented this and any thoughts? Thanks!
International SEO | | bjs20100 -
.com versus local domains
Hi all, One of my clients has local domain websites in various parts of the world (co.uk etc. etc.) and there has always been a discussion about where a move from local domain (the current set-up) to a targeted .com domain (i.e. .com/uk) would benefit from a SEO perspective. The main reasoning (seo-wise) that keeps coming up is that there'd only be one domain to link to which would help with link juice being passed around. Any thoughts as whether this would actually be the case or if this possible benefit would be outweighed by other cons? Recent moves (local to .com) from a few websites (the Guardian newspaper in the UK being the most recent one off the top of my head) has made me start thinking about it again! Diana
International SEO | | Diana.varbanescu0 -
Sub-domains or sub-directories for country-specific versions of the site?
What approach do you think would be better from an SEO perspective when creating country-targeted versions for an eCommerce site (all in the same language with slight regional changes) - sub-domains or sub-directories? Is any of the approaches more cost effective, web development-wise? I know this topic's been under much debate and I would really like to hear your opinion. Many thanks!
International SEO | | ramarketing0 -
Cross domain rel alternate, will it help or hurt?
I have a website that has similar pages on a US version and a UK version. Currently we want Uk traffic to go to the US, but the US domain is so strong it is outranking the UK in the UK. We want to try using rel alternate but have some concerns. Currently for some of our keywords US is #1, UK is #4. If we implement rel alternate, will it just remove our US page? We don't want to shoot ourselves in the foot and lose traffic. Is this worth doing, will it just remove our US ranking and our double listing? Any anecdotes, experiences or opinions are appreciated. Thanks.
International SEO | | MarloSchneider0